Simandou is a range of hills located in the Nzérékoré and

Kankan Kankan ( Mandingo: Kánkàn; N’ko: ߞߊ߲ߞߊ߲߫) is the largest city in Guinea in land area, and the third largest in population, with a population of 198,013 people as of 2020. The city is located in eastern Guinea about east of the ...

regions of southeastern

Guinea Guinea, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Guinea-Bissau to the northwest, Senegal to the north, Mali to the northeast, Côte d'Ivoire to the southeast, and Sier ...

, in the country's mountainous, forested ''

Guinée Forestière Guinée forestière (Forested Guinea) is a forested mountainous region in southeastern Guinea, extending into northeastern Sierra Leone. It is one of four natural regions into which Guinea is divided and covers 23% of the country. It includes a ...

'' region. At the southern end of the range the site of a large

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

deposit is currently being developed.

Geography

The Simandou Range extends north and south, it is located east of Banankoro and Kérouané, from southern Kankan Region into northern Nzérékoré Region. The highest point is Pic de Fon, elevation , in the southern portion of the range. Other peaks include Pic de Tibé, elevation , is located at the center of the range, and Pic de Going, , to the north.

Geology

The Simandou Range consists of a sequence of deformed itabirites,

phyllite Phyllite ( ) is a type of foliation (geology), foliated metamorphic rock formed from slate that is further metamorphosed so that very fine grained white mica achieves a preferred orientation.Stephen Marshak ''Essentials of Geology'', 3rd ed. I ...

s, and

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock that was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tecton ...

s within

Proterozoic The Proterozoic ( ) is the third of the four geologic eons of Earth's history, spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8 Mya, and is the longest eon of Earth's geologic time scale. It is preceded by the Archean and followed by the Phanerozo ...

basement rocks.http://www.hemscott.com/servlet/HsPublic?context=ir.access&ir_option=RNS_NEWS&item=64497524081696&ir_client_id=1245&transform=newsitem Rio Tinto - Iron ore resources, Simandou, Republic of Guinea, Rio Tinto News Announcement RNS Number 4634V, 29 May 2008, Accessed 12.12.2010

Ecology and natural history

The Simandou Range is an important area of conservation for the Guinean forest ecosystem of West Africa, one of the world's biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecosystems. The Upper Guinean forests ecosystem, of which the Simandou Range forms part of, extends across southern Guinea,

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

, southern Côte d’Ivoire,

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

, and western

Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...

. It is believed to have once covered as much as , but over centuries of human activity, nearly 70 percent of the original forest cover has disappeared, leaving isolated patches of different forest types that host ecological communities of exceptional diversity and numerous endemic species. GDA (Global Development Alliance) Promotes Forest Conservation, Community Development, USAID Guinea, 20 April 2004, Accessed 11.12.2010 The variety of habitats found in the Simandou Range include humid Guinean

savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

, Western Guinean lowland forest, montane and gallery forests, and the rare and endangered West African montane grassland habitat. The Pic de Fon forest at the southern end of the range is a relatively intact area of approximately 25,600 ha that contains many typical flora and fauna of the Guinean montane forests ecosystem, including endangered species such as the Nimba otter shrew (''Micropotamogale lamottei''), the West African chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes verus''), the Diana monkey (''Cercopithecus diana diana'') and the Sierra Leone prinia (''Schistolais leontica''), a bird of the West African highlands known from only three other sites in the world. Frog '' Hylarana fonensis'' is known from nowhere else. The area has so far been protected by relative isolation but its

biodiversity Biodiversity is the variability of life, life on Earth. It can be measured on various levels. There is for example genetic variability, species diversity, ecosystem diversity and Phylogenetics, phylogenetic diversity. Diversity is not distribut ...

is now threatened by the encroachment of agriculture, unregulated

bushmeat Bushmeat is meat from wildlife species that are Hunting, hunted for human consumption. Bushmeat represents a primary source of animal protein and a cash-earning commodity in poor and rural communities of humid tropical forest regions of the worl ...

hunting,

logging Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksLand tenure In Common law#History, common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land "owned" by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement betw ...

conflicts and ecologically destructive

subsistence farming Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops on smallholdings to meet the needs of themselves and their families. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occ ...

practices (

slash and burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. T ...

agriculture), exacerbated by poverty, also pose problems for the environment. The range has two classified forests: Pic de Fon, designated in 1953, with an area of 256 km², and Pic de Tibé, designated in 1945, with an area of 60.75 km²."2014 United Nations List of Protected areas of Guinea (data based on the WDPA October release)" Protected Planet. Accessed 9 October 2015

/ref>

Mining

Simandou has the potential to become the site of the largest integrated iron-ore mine and infrastructure project ever developed in Africa, consisting of a large new source of iron ore and creating a 650 km new railway to the Guinean coast at Matakong. However, the potentially lucrative blocks I and II were mired for several years later in litigation of possible corruption. This corruption, which occurred through the use of bribery involved two Western foreign companies - Rio Tinto, a British-Australian company and BSGR. Around 2015, the mining project seemed to have been sidelined due to dwindling global iron demand.Africa Confidential article March 2015
/ref> However, a version of the full original mining project was re-instated in late 2019Plan back on track - article of 5th December 2019
/ref> and confirmed in 2020 with the signing of a new agreementSMB-Winning consortium deal
/ref> with the Chinese company SMB-Winning.

Namesake

There is a town of the same name in nearby Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). This town is not to be confused with Siamandou further to the west.

References

External links

Rio Tinto Simandou website home page
accessed 25 December 2010

accessed 25 December 2010 * ttps://web.archive.org/web/20080613081112/http://www.riotintoironore.com/ENG/operations/301_simandou.asp Rio Tinto Iron Ore website Simandou page accessed 25 December 2010
"Mining Groups Target West Africa", by William Macnamara, FT.com, 18.5.2010
site accessed 25 December 2010, page now behind payscreen * {{WWF ecoregion, id=at0114, name=Guinean montane forests, accessdate=12 December 2010 Afromontane Mountain ranges of Guinea Guinean montane forests Rail transport in Guinea